And when you've got extra time, why waste it? That's why I like Muhammed Rahman. His Kwik Meal cart is an example of truth in advertising. Though the line is often long at his little cart, Mr. Rahman pops his head out, expedites orders, and gets you your food in minutes.

I've had Mr. Rahman's fare for my last four lunches after having been introduced to it by Ed Levine last Wednesday. So far I've had the cheesesteak, lamb on pita, chicken on pita, and again, today, the cheesesteak.

I promised myself I'd eat through the entire menu once before duplicating an order, but the cheesesteak is just too good—and I had a cheese craving pre-lunch. Thin strips of tender beef are layered with red onion; green pepper; and a tangy, white cheese sauce infused with a subtle and slightly hot blend of Bangladeshi spices.

So far, I don't know if the lamb on pita or the cheesesteak is my favorite. I may have to break my rule again and reorder both to put them head to head.

Kwik Meal
Location: Southwest corner of 45th Street and Sixth Ave., Midtown West
Cost: Cheesesteak, $4.25; lamb on pita $5.25

Allow me to introduce (from left) Ms. Bento and Mr. Bento. They're insulated lunch jars from Zojirushi. They're recent acquaintances of mine, having met them through A Full Belly.

I think they'd be perfect for bringing a batch of Japanese curry to work, but I'm not sure which to get. Sure, Mr. Bento can hold up to four different things, but all I need are compartments for rice and curry sauce. Would it be too emasculating to get a blue Ms. Bento? Or would Mr. Bento provide unexpected versatility?

Ms. Bento [Zojirushi.com]
Mr. Bento [Zojirushi.com]
Buy Mr. Bento [Amazon; Ms. Bento currently unavailable]

First, the one over Pete Wells's column in the March 2006 issue of Food & Wine. Here's Mr. Wells's column: In the Belly of the Blog.

The responses:
Dine & Dis [Deep End Dining]
On Pete Wells' "In the Belly of the Blog" [Pinoy Cook]
In Defense of the Cheese Sandwich [Food Musings]
The Buzz Under Fire [Strongbuzz, via Eater]

Another interesting response to Mr. Wells's words comes in the form of a meme. Tomorrow is Cheese Sandwich Day [Kalyn's Kitchen].

Not more than a few days later, a seemingly innocuous post on Bay Area Bites stirred up a small tempest in the comments section. Here's the post: The Commonwealth Club Features Foodbloggers! [Via A Full Belly] A number of comments in the thread have been deleted, so maybe I'm not getting the full scope of what was said, but it appears to revolve around just what "community" means in the foodblog world. (On a side note, I didn't know Blogger allowed comment authors to go back and delete their words, but apparently it does.)

Photograph by Indigentevirtual, via Flickr

Emigre Poppi Food One [MyFonts.com]
Poppi Food Two [MyFonts.com]

Also available from Emigre: Poppi Household, Medical, Office, Sex & Crime, Sports, and Tools

Hobo Signs [cyberhobo.com]

You can live your entire life never cooking with anything but a rice cooker. In fact, I've been threatening to write the rice-cooker cookbook. There's a warning on my machine that says, "Do not cook anything in this but rice." But there's no reason for that warning. You can make stews, soups and pasta in it.

I'd never heard of Ebert's diet, but apparently the girl's little sister had. Little Sis's response to Big Sis? "You're going to trust Roger Ebert, who's a.) fat, and b.) not a chef but a film critic?"

The conversation reminded me of a well-worn newspaper clipping I've been keeping (above) as a reminder to experiment with my own rice cooker. I told the girl I'd scan it and send it to her, but instead I'm posting it here. It's from a November 2002 "Possessed" column in the New York Times. If you can't read the scan (click on it for a larger version), it's about chef David Bouley's own rice cookery:

The Japanese chefs also showed him how to make tiny one-dish meals inside the cooker. To illustrate, he seasoned rice with a bit of soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin and tomato water and put it in a ceramic crock small enough to fit inside the pot. After about 20 minutes, he stirred in morsels of half-cooked lobster, diced raw asparagus, minced chervil and tarragon and a splash of sake. Then he steamed the dish for another five minutes. ''High-end crock cooking,'' Mr. Bouley said dryly.

So there you go.

Possessed: Rice Has Met Its Match [New York Times; TimesSelect]
A Film Critic's Windy City Home [New York Times]

Late Tuesday afternoon, after four days of testimony and summation and eight hours of deliberation, my fellow jurors and I reached a verdict in the case we were sitting on. On Slice, I did some musing on the old Otto von Bismarck quote: "Those who love sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made." Needless to say, the proceedings in the courthouse reminded me of those words. I explored the topic of making Italian fennel sausage on the pizza site.

From there, however, it's a quick leap to homemade hot dogs. It's a leap my mind made during an intense period of argument in the jury room when it was clear we were getting nowhere: "Sausage and law, heh ... homemade Italian sausage ... should explore that idea for pizza ... isn't a hot dog just a sausage by a different name? ... homemade hot dogs ... no lips and assholes ... no gross, unknown ingredients ... could make homemade corndogs, too ... need deep fryer ... the girlfriend's not going to like the deep-fryer idea ... "

So I did some research Tuesday night. It looks like making your own hot dogs wouldn't be so difficult. Time consuming, sure. But it's basically just running some meat, pork fat, and seasonings through a food processor or meat grinder and then stuffing the mixture into some sausage casings. And what better way to honor the Year of the Dog?

CASING THE OINK
I think a lot of people intentionally avoid thinking about casings. After all, sausage-makers originally used hog intestines, and how appetizing is that? I don't really mind the idea, but if you do, there are "synthetic" casings now, made from collagen. Where to get these? Check with your butcher. My neighborhood butcher, A&S Pork Store on Fifth Avenue and Garfield in Park Slope, sells large and thin casings. If you can't find casings at your own butcher, try ordering them online from SausageMaker.com: casings.

STUFF IT, BUDDY
Oh, you can't just spoon the meat mixture into the casings. You need a sausage stuffer for that. You can find those, too, at SausageMaker.com. On that site, they range in price from $50 for a hand-operated model that can handle three pounds of sausage (right) to a $2,000 motorized stuffer with a 25 lb. capacity. Even better, if you own a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, you can buy a sausage-stuffer attachment for $13.99.

LET THE DOGS OUT
So after you stuff the casings, you've got honest-to-goodness dogs on your hands. Before you do anything with them, though, it looks like you gotta par-boil them. Once par-boiled, you can either cook them in any manner you'd like (personally, I'd grill 'em) or freeze them for later. Seems like it'd be a shame to freeze them, though. Why go through all the trouble only to degrade the quality and freshness by going arctic on 'em? The recipe below (click through the jump) seems like it'll make about 24 frankfurters. So instead of icing the links, fire up the grill, invite some friends over, cry havoc, and let slip the dogs. (It should be noted that you can refrigerate them for up to a week.)

GOT BUNS, HON?
This is probably material for another post, or an addendum to this one at a later date, but as long as you're making the dogs from scratch, why not the buns, too? I haven't had time to look for a really great tried-and-true bun recipe, but maybe I'll start with this one from AllRecipes.com.

Of course, why use a bun at all? I believe that once I get the homemade dog technique down, corndogs will follow. Stay tuned!

Homemade Frankfurters (Hot Dogs) [About.com]
Burger or Hot Dog Buns [AllRecipes.com]
Order casings [SausageMaker.com]
Kitchen Aid sausage-stuffer attachment [KitchenAid.com]

Seven things to do before I die
1. Visit all 50 states and all Canadian provinces
2. Own a dog
3. Witness a UFO (but not be abducted)
4. Go snow camping
5. Build an ice shack (it would be like an ice palace, but not as grand, i.e. a shack) and have an ice-shack party in it
6. Move to Oregon (photo, right)
7. Own a house with an outdoor pizza oven (hopefully in Oregon [see above], so I guess I better place that oven under a shelter of some sort)

Seven things I cannot do
1. Lie very well
2. Eat healthful foods on a regular basis
3. Get up early
4. Go to bed early
5. Stop proscrastinating
6. Stop figeting
7. Eat things flavored with cumin (It smells like B.O.)

Seven things that attract me to blogging
1. It lets me share my knowledge and love of pizza, burgers, and other food
2. It has helped me make online and real friends with people from all over the place
3. It helps document my food adventures
4. It has made me take more photos
5. It gives me opportunities to do weird things (like judge in pizza contests)
6. It gives me a somewhat guilt-free excuse to eat poorly
7. It sharpens my web skills

Seven things I say most often
1. "Oh well"
2. "Hmm. Sounds good"
3. "Evil" (Picked up in junior high from Hecubus the Manservant, a recurring character on Kids in the Hall)
4. "Ai yi yi"
5. "Alrighty then"
6. "Ughhh"
7. "Hmm. I don't know about that"

Seven books I love
1. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
2. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
3. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
4. Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, Ed Levine
5. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
6. Ask the Dust, John Fante
7. Great Expectations, Dickens

Seven movies/DVDs that I watch over and over again
1. Chungking Express
2. Old School
3. In the Mood for Love (still from movie, right)
4. Wages of Fear
5. Ikiru
6. Groundhog Day
7. Pulp Fiction

Seven bloggers I want to join in, too (in no particular order)
1. Noodlepie
2. Foodite
3. Miss Ginsu
4. Eat, Drink, One Woman
5. The Girl Who Ate Everything
6. Ono' Kine Grindz
7. The Impetuous Epicure

I had one package of boil-in-bag curry left from a New Year's Eve curry shopping spree. Yongfook.com is right: This is wrong. I already knew that, but when you're hungry and haven't gone grocery shopping, whattaya gonna do? This stuff will definitely not be among the curries I try in my upcoming, at-some-point-in-the-not-too-distant-future Curry-a-Thon. The boil-in-bag variety has an acrid metallic aftertaste that makes it almost impossible to eat.

This is curry sauce in its most perverted form, which got me thinking: If this stuff is nasty, and even if the stuff from a box is full of things you might rather not consume, what about making it from scratch? A quick search turned up a recipe on Chowhound: Japanese Curry from Scratch.

Good news, you might think, but beware: It will take several days to make. Which means it'll have to wait until after I finish with jury duty.

Japanese Curry from Scratch (You're Not Going to Like It, Though) [Chowhound.com]
This Is Wrong [Yongfook.com]

If you've ever wondered what it'd be like to judge on Iron Chef America (the original Iron Chef is another matter entirely) food writer Ed Levine blogs his recent experience on his recently launched blog, Ed Levine Eats, where he dishes about the judging process:

I want to dispel a couple of Iron Chef myths. Number one, the fix isn't in, so it's not the culinary equivalent of Pro Wrestling. They don't tell you to vote for the Iron Chef. Number two, the judges don't confer when they render their judgment. In fact, I overheard my fellow judges Ted Allen (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and Cady Huffman (the original Ula in the Broadway production of The Producers) talking about something, and I asked them them to repeat what they had said. They said they couldn't until I handed my scorecard in. Once I handed it in, I was amazed when I discovered that each of us had picked the same chef as the winner, with the exact same winning margin. Who won? I'm sworn to secrecy ...

Cast Iron Chef [Ed Levine Eats]

Japanese curry sauce is served over rice, no surprise, and is known there as karei raisu, or "curry rice"—as you may have guessed. As you may not have guessed, it is eaten with a spoon, not chopsticks.

So how did a Kansas-raised gaijin come by this dish? From a college housemate whose mom is Japanese. At some point back in the mid-'90s, at one of the various apartments we lived in, he cooked up a batch of curry (using an S & B mix, as per his mom's recipe) and let me try it. At that point, karei raisu (pronounced "ka-ray rye-su," with the Japanese combo r/l sound) became my third-favorite food (pizza and tiny hamburgers, of course, holding down spots one and two).

Those of you familiar with curry rice will note that my version of the stuff looks a little different than that served in Japan or at Japanese restaurants here. My friend's mom didn't know how to cook when she came to the U.S., so her Japanese cooking is more like, uh, Midwestern-Japanese fusion. Call it "hanbaaga helper." This stuff, made from 30 or more different spices, is delicious and strangely addictive. Fortunately, it's quite easy to feed such an addiction, if you find yourself hooked on the stuff.

Start with a box of curry sauce mix (right). S&B seems to be the most commonly available brand and is available in mild, medium, and hot. House Foods has several styles—Vermont, Java, Kokumaro, among them—also available in mild, medium, and hot varieties. For a more authentic version, I guess you'd have to follow the instructions on the box. I'm going to detail how my Japanese-Midwestern fusion version is made:

Popular phrases include the slang for getting a parking ticket, which in Cantonese is "I ate beef jerky," probably because Chinese beef jerky is thin and rectangular, like a parking ticket. And teo bao (literally "too full") describes someone who is uber-trendy, so hip he or she is going to explode.

Many sayings are coined by movie stars on screen. Telling someone to chill out, comedian Stephen Chow says: "Drink a cup of tea and eat a bun."

Want to try Chinese beef jerky yourself? Check out New Beef King at 89 Bayard Street. Phone: 212-233-6612. If you're outside New York, it looks like you can order from New Beef King online: NewBeefKing.com.

There's also a Malaysian version sold, not surprisingly, at Malaysian Beef Jerky, 95A Elizabeth Street (212-965-0796), and also at Ling Kee Beef Jerky, 42 Canal Street (212-965-1206).

Cantonese Is Losing Its Voice The Los Angeles Times
New Beef King jerky selection [NewBeefKing.com]